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Topic: Flaked maize percentage for CAP (Read 3069 times)

I have been brewing CAPs for a while now, but never seem to get that corny flavor that most great CAPs have. My latest one is exactly 25% flaked maize. How high of a percentage of flaked maize can I go to in search of that corny taste?

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The recipes I have from Jeff Renner (27% maize) and George Fix (29% maize) seem to indicate that you're in the ballpark with 25%. What was the rest of your process and what yeast did you use? Maybe that would yield some clues. Are you trying to clone a particular CAP that has that "corny" taste?Gail

The last CAP I made used 25% flaked corn (3 lbs) and I thought it had way too much of a corn taste so I would think you should be in the ball park. Gail brings up a good question. What yeast are you using and what temperature are you fermenting at?

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--WesRocky Mountain BrewerEast of Avery Brewery, South of New Belgium, Co.

Ingredients: Six-row barley with 20% to 30% flaked maize to dilute the excessive protein levels. Native American hops such as Clusters, traditional continental noble hops, or modern noble crosses (Ultra, Liberty, Crystal) are also appropriate. Modern American hops such as Cascade are inappropriate. Water with a high mineral content can lead to an inappropriate coarseness in flavor and harshness in aftertaste.

So I'd say that 25% is adequate, but we do have the ability to deviate form this.

The current batch is not done lagering yet, so it may improve. I used Danish lager and American lager in a split 12 gallon batch. An interesting side note is the American lager is crystal clear and the Danish still has yeast haze after 3 weeks lagering

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All views expressed in the above post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any other member of the AHA, BJCP, or home brew community at large.

I have had good luck with 20-25% flaked corn and the remainder domestic pils (75-80%) using the Bohemian Lager yeast as well as Saflager. The flavors really seem to develop in the style with lagering around a month minimum, and tasting prior to this I get more bready/yeasty notes. The beer needs to sit at low temperature until it drops quite clear in my experience

I find flaked maize leaves a little sweetness in my CAPs that help balance the more "rustic" hops. I generally use 10% corn with 6-row; after three months in the cold cellar it scored well but the judge couldn't tell if I'd used corn or rice. I haven't yet done the cereal mash with polenta but I'm ready to after doing one with flaked wheat this summer for a wit (more room for error when I'm throwing coriander and chamomile around).

Probably the corniest I've brewed was one that started at 1069 with 11 lb 6-row and 3 lb flaked maize (21%) with Clusters and Saaz. Maybe brew a big CAP?

I generally use about 22%, which is actually low on the scale historically - say 100 years ago. I'm not sure I get an actual corn flavor but I do think it gives a corny sweetness, as contrasted to when I use rice, which seems to give a drier, crisper beer. George Fix agreed (actually, I agreed with him.)

But who knows? At the 2000 National Homebrewers Conference in Livonia, Michigan, where I gave a talk on CAP, retired Stroh Brewery brewmaster (and inventor of the Beer Flavor Wheel) Morten Meilgaard also spoke, and was very insistent that corn and rice were neutral in flavor!

Stroh's archivist Peter Blum also spoke. He told me that Stroh's used rice until the 1950s, then corn until the 1980s, when they used brewers corn syrup (with the same sugar spectrum as mashed grain).

Rice was preferred by many brewers of 100 years ago because of the reputation that milled corn had had of having too high a proportion of oil, which would go rancid and spoil the quality of the beer. Advances in dry milling of corn eliminated this problem, but Stroh was a very conservative, family owned business according to Blum, and stayed with rice long after most brewers had switched to corn.

Both Blum and Meilgaard were quite definite that there was no flavor difference in corn, rice and corn syrup. They definitely knew their business, and spoke from experience with tasting panels.

At any rate, in answer to the original question, 20-30% corn should give corn character. Make sure that your flaked maize is fresh and has a corn aroma. Doing a cereal mash with corn meal or polenta might help. Beside, it's fun.

One further question is, were you tasting DMS in those samples you've identified as having corn flavor? That is different, and can be appropriate in small amounts. It was typical of many midwest beers before modern techniques cleaned it up.

Jeff, I do agree with you that corn gives the beer a sweeter taste than rice. This summer I brewed a side by side where I used 25% rice and 75% 6-row in one beer and 25% corn grits in the other. The corn beer definitely had a sweeter taste. I also heard the same, that corn beers taste sweeter than rice beers, from a brew master at AB. I guess even the pros can't agree.